This also stood out to me this time. Marianne is introduced as being "sensible and clever; but eager in everything." But then she makes these remarks about the Colonel being incapable of feeling due to his age -- and yet he's younger than her very emotional mother. And stating that "a woman of seven and twenty... can never hope to feel or inspire affection again." Does she really think that her life will be over, at least emotionally, in just 10 years? Or that her parents, being well over 20, no longer felt affection for each other?